When the Sahara is not an option: The best ways to dry out a cell phone

Video evidence that we will try pretty much anything to save a wet phone.

Cell phones and moisture are, to put it in the nicest of terms, sworn mortal enemies. If you can't tell a story where you dropped your phone and it shattered to pieces, chances are you have one where you spilled, splashed, or trickled water on it, or dropped it in a puddle, sink, or pool... or best of all, a toilet.

Folklore and actual science have offered solutions to the problem of the wet cell phone over the last couple of decades, from toasting it gently in the oven to burying it in some rice to buying special drying environments for it. While we’ve had various amounts of success with these different methods, we decided to give them a real, semi-scientific trial run on a few different phones to see how they dealt with a serious immersion scenario.

A few caveats: we used four different phones, one for each drying environment we tested. Obviously, different body designs will take on water differently, but we submerged each one until all the air had appeared to escape from the interior. Likewise, different designs may dry out differently, and water may have an easier time clinging to some nooks and crannies.

Since a wet phone is a Defcon 1 situation in the context of device disasters, we didn't give the phones a specific time frame to dry out—if your phone is wet and you want it back, it’s in your best interest to give it as much time as you possibly can. We checked in on each phone after one day; those that were still wet were given an extra day. You can certainly dry them even longer.

Lastly, even if your phone appears to be working again after cooling its heels a while in a desert-dry place, that doesn’t mean water isn’t still in there working its long-term magic to corrode the various parts of the phone. Above all things, give it time, make sure it’s dry, and maybe never feel completely safe that there isn’t some lingering moisture intent on ruining your phones after a few weeks or months.

Full immersion: getting cell phones wet, and then drying them out

The four phones we soaked were a Samsung Galaxy Note II, a Pantech Breakout, a Motorola Razr M, and a HTC Hero. All the models varied in size, number of buttons, and openings, but all are touch-screen phones. The four drying methods used for each phone, respectively, were a specially designed product called a Bheestie Bag ($20), a container full of silica gel packets ($10-15 for the number we used), rice ($5), and air-drying as a sort of “control” method.

After soaking each phone, we removed it, shook out as much excess water as we could, dried it off, and removed the batteries if we could. If we couldn’t remove the battery and the phone was still on, we turned it off, and then placed it in its drying environment.

For the grand reveal: one day later, the Pantech Breakout in the silica gel packets and HTC Hero drying in air were working, but the Galaxy Note II in the Bheestie Bag and the Razr M in rice were still dead.

We gave the second two phones another day to see if they would come around. The next day, the Razr M initially booted up—to a screen with an Android bot lying down with an exclamation point popping Alien-style out of its stomach. All seemed lost, but as the phone laid on the table, it began its startup routine and animations all on its own. Suspicious, indeed, but we’ll let it slide.

The Galaxy Note II, however, never really came around. After we reseated its battery and charged it a while, trying to give it a hard reset got us to the screen when the phone offered to either boot or let us install a new ROM; it would not respond to button presses beyond that. We wouldn’t consider this a knock against the Bheestie Bag, as a phone of the Galaxy Note II’s generous size has room for a lot of water, and it’s not the easiest to drain out. A couple of days later, we tried drying out the phone in a 200-degree oven; lo and behold, it powered up and ran. Given the time-lapse, we can't fully attribute this success to the oven and, given the potential to ruin your phone, this should be a last-ditch effort. But if you're desperate, it's there.

As for the rice, silica gel packets, and even plain air, all returned the phones to at least a temporary working state. We wouldn’t call the phones rock-solid from that point on, but the methods can at least get them dry enough to extract any necessary data or one last backup. If we wanted to continue to use them, we’d probably give them much longer to dry, living in fear of that moment when things start to go just a little awry—an unresponsive volume button here, a suddenly dead battery there—when we’d know exactly what event and element to blame.

Immediately powered it off, disassembled it and removed the battery. Put the phone itself in a bag full of white rice with the back taken off. Left it there for two days.

Took it out later, put it in the toaster oven for about two hours at the lowest heat setting and let it bake.

Installed a new battery and it powered on and works like nothing ever happened. There was some residual moisture between the screen and the front glass that made the display look a little wonky but after about two weeks it went away. Phone still functions normally.

We've had people at work bring in two-way radios they've dunked, usually a long bath in electronics-grade isopropyl alcohol (99%+) and the toaster oven works on them. Except for the ones the wastewater treatment people have dropped in "product" as they go straight to the landfill. Eww.

2 posts | registered Jan 29, 2013

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

138 Reader Comments

From an engineering/scientific perspective, probably the most effective way to dry a phone under such situations is in a vacuum. So, someone should try designing a decent (inexpensive) vacuum dryer for small electronic devices. I'd pay $50-100 USD for one. It should work for cell phones, bluetooth headsets, wifi and usb dongles, etc. As the air is sucked out, the water evaporates and is also removed from the system. Just remember to let the device warm up to room temperature again before using it as vacuum drying will drop the temperature to sub-zero quite easily.

I had to dry my Droid X out once. Removed the battery, put it in a ziploc bag with a dessicant pack from one of my rifle cases, left it overnight. It's still working; I bought it a few weeks after they came out, and a buddy of mine is still using it.

The dessicant was handy because I could tell by color it hadn't reached full saturation.

You have to stir the rice frequently (about once every few hours) so there is always "fresh" rice against the phone and the phone has to be open (back pulled off) for the rice method to work and you need at least a half pound of rice. Takes forever it seems though.

Our work phones get wet all the time. A vacuum is good especially if pulling cold air across the phone, we put ours in the freezer for several minutes to cool it down then use the wet vac to suck the freezer air across the phone, dries right up very nicely and back in service within the hour. Let it warm up a little though after doing this. Need to remove the back and open the phone up though.

From an engineering/scientific perspective, probably the most effective way to dry a phone under such situations is in a vacuum. So, someone should try designing a decent (inexpensive) vacuum dryer for small electronic devices. I'd pay $50-100 USD for one. It should work for cell phones, bluetooth headsets, wifi and usb dongles, etc. As the air is sucked out, the water evaporates and is also removed from the system. Just remember to let the device warm up to room temperature again before using it as vacuum drying will drop the temperature to sub-zero quite easily.

I suspect the sub-zero temperatures would do at least as much damage as the water...

Immediately powered it off, disassembled it and removed the battery. Put the phone itself in a bag full of white rice with the back taken off. Left it there for two days.

Took it out later, put it in the toaster oven for about two hours at the lowest heat setting and let it bake.

Installed a new battery and it powered on and works like nothing ever happened. There was some residual moisture between the screen and the front glass that made the display look a little wonky but after about two weeks it went away. Phone still functions normally.

We've had people at work bring in two-way radios they've dunked, usually a long bath in electronics-grade isopropyl alcohol (99%+) and the toaster oven works on them. Except for the ones the wastewater treatment people have dropped in "product" as they go straight to the landfill. Eww.

Almost everything that's gets submerged in water that is dc will work again when dried out completely, and not powered back on.You should never attempt to power on a device that is wet,I am sure you know. That can cause major damage. For me Rice, silica packets, or backing soda contained in paper packets, gives excellent results. Time item is wet and salinity of the water is a key factor in the recovery process. if it was wet and sealed with salt water and its been a week your pretty much screwed.Air works too, but take the most time, and is some what unpredictable in its results, depending on ambient humidly. I run a PC repair shop, and its amazing the things I have seen people do to their devices,(mostly by accident). I don't just service PCs and phones. So I have a large number of things I have tried to repair from different scenarios of disaster before ordering replacement parts.

When drying out a device it is best to have all the covers removed and wiped dry.If your not a tech just remove the ones you an are a great help.As a rule I make it point to wait 3 days and change the rice when it swells to adsorb the moisture.

I have found rice and silica to be nearly equally effective in drying things out. Rice is more abundant to find.

If dropping a phone in water is a significant risk, buy a waterproof phone. Pretty easy to find these days. I realized that I do have a tendency to drop devices outdoors in arbitrary weather myself, and thus I made toughness the first priority when I got a new phone. Happy with that choice so far, having had at least one otherwise potentially fatal accident in less than a month.

And waterproof phones open up for all kinds of fun jokes to. People jump when you accidentally drop in a glass or use it for underwater photography. Even though a touch-screen controlled camera like on my Xperia V really works very poorly under water.

Not a phone, but I once got my Cowon J3 portable media player a little wet (left it in a pocket... and laundered it). It wouldn't turn on, or fire up when attached to the computer. I couldn't remove the battery, so I just left the whole device in a glass of rice. I then put the glass over a vent, to catch the warm dry air from our heating at the time. After a week or so under those conditions, it still wouldn't turn on. So I gave up and bought a new mp3 player. The J3 was stowed away on a high shelf in the open. About a year later, I plugged the J3 into my computer on a whim. It came right up! A quick test drive showed that it worked flawlessly and holds a charge without any apparent danger; the only "damage" was a little film on the inside edges of the display that don't even show up when the screen is lit.

From an engineering/scientific perspective, probably the most effective way to dry a phone under such situations is in a vacuum. So, someone should try designing a decent (inexpensive) vacuum dryer for small electronic devices. I'd pay $50-100 USD for one. It should work for cell phones, bluetooth headsets, wifi and usb dongles, etc. As the air is sucked out, the water evaporates and is also removed from the system. Just remember to let the device warm up to room temperature again before using it as vacuum drying will drop the temperature to sub-zero quite easily.

Rubberman has the right solution in the wrong paradigm. The best way to dry out a cell phone is to soak it in an ethanol bath for a few minutes. Water and ethanol dissolve easily in one another so the ethanol dissolves the water out of the phone quite easily. Then you take it out and let it air dry which it will do quite quickly because ethanol has a much lower boiling temperature than water. Rubberman wants to use a vacuum to lower the boiling temp of water. But that's way overkill. Just replace the water with ethanol which already has a low boiling temp.

EDIT: Yes I understand that most people don't actually have access to laboratory grade ethanol.

I'm a little surprised that no one has tried (or at least suggested) a blow dryer. After I dropped my phone into a swimming pool it took all of a few hours of gentle drying from 12" away for the phone to completely dry out. The warm breeze did a great job penetrating into the nooks and crannies.

Several years ago I found a Razr phone fully submerged in a puddle outside of a college bar. I fished it out and took it home, and on the advice of a friend, I submerged it again completely, in rubbing alcohol. The theory was that rubbing alcohol (though 30% water) has a lower surface tension and therefore would have an easier time evaporating the tiny beads of liquid trapped in the phone.

After the rubbing alcohol bath I let it sit out for a couple days. I had a guy at RadioShack clean out the gunk in the charging port, borrowed a friend's charger for the phone and it turned on and worked. The water damage indicator was bright red. I would have used it but it was for a different carrier than I had so I sold it.

Silica gel should work better than rice. It's a much more effective dessicant.

It is also very easy to obtain in quantity, from most decent-sized grocery stores: go to the pet supplies aisle and buy a bag of the "crystal"-type cat litter. That's silica gel. A lot more than you need for a phone, but at around $10 for eight pounds, it won't break you.

Wrap the phone in a thin sock and bury it in the crystals. You can even re-use the crystals in the cat pan later. (Be sure to retrieve the phone first.)

Rubberman has the right solution in the wrong paradigm. The best way to dry out a cell phone is to soak it in an ethanol bath for a few minutes. Water and ethanol dissolve easily in one another so the ethanol dissolves the water out of the phone quite easily. Then you take it out and let it air dry which it will do quite quickly because ethanol has a much lower boiling temperature than water. Rubberman wants to use a vacuum to lower the boiling temp of water. But that's way overkill. Just replace the water with ethanol which already has a low boiling temp.

EDIT: Yes I understand that most people don't actually have access to laboratory grade ethanol.

Just remember that you might have issues with the adhesives inside the phone afterwards. I had to use this method once on a phone that had been submerged for upwards of an hour. Afterwards the electronics operated just fine, still do, but the loud speaker and backlight diffuser had become distorted.

Several years ago I found a Razr phone fully submerged in a puddle outside of a college bar. I fished it out and took it home, and on the advice of a friend, I submerged it again completely, in rubbing alcohol. The theory was that rubbing alcohol (though 30% water) has a lower surface tension and therefore would have an easier time evaporating the tiny beads of liquid trapped in the phone.

After the rubbing alcohol bath I let it sit out for a couple days. I had a guy at RadioShack clean out the gunk in the charging port, borrowed a friend's charger for the phone and it turned on and worked. The water damage indicator was bright red. I would have used it but it was for a different carrier than I had so I sold it.

It's better to use 99% isopropyl. Most larger drug stores carry this. But, heck, if you have the 70% stuff handy (which also contains perfumes and oils and other stuff for its role as "rubbing" alcohol), start with that, then run to the drugstore and replace with the 99%.

It's better to use 99% isopropyl. Most larger drug stores carry this. But, heck, if you have the 70% stuff handy (which also contains perfumes and oils and other stuff for its role as "rubbing" alcohol), start with that, then run to the drugstore and replace with the 99%.

Thanks for the tip, I'll use it if I ever have another soggy phone to save. Luckily I wasn't invested anything in this phone, it was more of an experiment just to see if I could coax it back to life.

Rubberman has the right solution in the wrong paradigm. The best way to dry out a cell phone is to soak it in an ethanol bath for a few minutes. Water and ethanol dissolve easily in one another so the ethanol dissolves the water out of the phone quite easily. Then you take it out and let it air dry which it will do quite quickly because ethanol has a much lower boiling temperature than water. Rubberman wants to use a vacuum to lower the boiling temp of water. But that's way overkill. Just replace the water with ethanol which already has a low boiling temp.

EDIT: Yes I understand that most people don't actually have access to laboratory grade ethanol.

LoL Glad you understand that... went nuts trying to find that ethanol, just knew the chemical supply house had to have delivered it.

Actually though I like your idea. Is there any residue left and does it affect any adhesives or any circuit board coatings?

Rubberman has the right solution in the wrong paradigm. The best way to dry out a cell phone is to soak it in an ethanol bath for a few minutes. Water and ethanol dissolve easily in one another so the ethanol dissolves the water out of the phone quite easily. Then you take it out and let it air dry which it will do quite quickly because ethanol has a much lower boiling temperature than water. Rubberman wants to use a vacuum to lower the boiling temp of water. But that's way overkill. Just replace the water with ethanol which already has a low boiling temp.

You know, on second thought... I'm not so sure about the alcohol bath. For one thing, ethanol (and IPA for that matter) is a fine dissolver of adhesives, as someone else already commented. It may attack other stuff within the phone too. 99% IPA is how I clean up the remains of rubber feet that have somehow de-vulcanized themselves and turned to goo. It attacks intact rubber feet equally well.

For another, there is really no way to guarantee that the alcohol gets to every place the water got. Maybe use a quick alcohol bath for the large, easy-to-flood pockets and then follow up with low pressure for a while? No need for anything approaching actual "vacuum", of course.

Jumped in the pool with my very first phone in my swimsuit pocket several years back, it spent several minutes at depth. After I realized it I pulled the battery, rinsed it in distilled water to try and wash out as much chlorine as I could, and then microwaved some very fine rice and poured the rice over it in a bowl (didn't seal it). Proceeded to take the phone out and reheat the rice every few hours for two or three days, and the phone was good as new, it lasted about five years after that.

Rubberman has the right solution in the wrong paradigm. The best way to dry out a cell phone is to soak it in an ethanol bath for a few minutes. Water and ethanol dissolve easily in one another so the ethanol dissolves the water out of the phone quite easily. Then you take it out and let it air dry which it will do quite quickly because ethanol has a much lower boiling temperature than water. Rubberman wants to use a vacuum to lower the boiling temp of water. But that's way overkill. Just replace the water with ethanol which already has a low boiling temp.

EDIT: Yes I understand that most people don't actually have access to laboratory grade ethanol.

Just remember that you might have issues with the adhesives inside the phone afterwords. I had to use this method once on a phone that had been submerged for upwards of an hour. Afterwards the electronics operated just fine, still do, but the loud speaker and backlight diffuser had become distorted.

I've noticed those same problems with wet phones that were air or gentle heat dried also though. It's possible that it's the ethanol, but I wouldn't expect ethanol to dissolve adhesives much better than water does. Definitely if you tried something like acetone you'd melt a good portion of what's inside the phone. I don't know for sure but I'd expect that dissolved minerals in the water got deposited on the thin speaker membranes and diffuser.

If you don't have a way to create a vacuum - and most consumers really don't, even though so many of us really suck - then compressed air may be more readily available and can work reasonably well. At least as a starting point, to be applied prior to the silica rice gel ethanol bath oven suckage treatments.

Of course, it works best if the circuits are bare. (Naked and wet! How humiliating!) For a cell phone or tablet, you'd have to at least get the back or battery compartment door off, and remove as many components as possible. (Typically only a battery and a SIM card, in this case, but have a look anyway. Don't remove anything that has the radiation symbol on it; everything else that looks loose, or like it wants to be loose, is fair game.)

Use a variable flow, directional nozzle that increases pressure by narrowing down the airway, and blast as much water out as possible. Again, with a still partially sealed device, this may only serve to move water into certain areas, rather than to evacuate the premises enclosure. But I've had good luck with this method on bare circuit boards, keyboards, and the like. YMMV.

From an engineering/scientific perspective, probably the most effective way to dry a phone under such situations is in a vacuum. So, someone should try designing a decent (inexpensive) vacuum dryer for small electronic devices. I'd pay $50-100 USD for one. It should work for cell phones, bluetooth headsets, wifi and usb dongles, etc. As the air is sucked out, the water evaporates and is also removed from the system. Just remember to let the device warm up to room temperature again before using it as vacuum drying will drop the temperature to sub-zero quite easily.

I would not advise this. For one thing, if there are any pockets of air (or other gas) in the phone itself, exposure to vacuum could end up rupturing them and destroy the phone. The LCD screen in particular would probably not like a vacuum.

It's better to use 99% isopropyl. Most larger drug stores carry this. But, heck, if you have the 70% stuff handy (which also contains perfumes and oils and other stuff for its role as "rubbing" alcohol), start with that, then run to the drugstore and replace with the 99%.

I didn't know Isopropyl Alcohol could be used for this purpose but I'm not surprised, I've been using it to clean PC components for years. It's great for cleaning contact surfaces between CPUs and Heatsinks as well as the edge connectors of slot in cards.

EDIT: - ***WARNING*** Isopropyl Alcohol is probably harmful to phone adhesives, such as the glue used to bond screen glass. I just tested some Isopropanol (Isopropyl Alcohol) on Adhesive residue left behind on wood by an old price label and on old duct tape residue on glass. The Isopropanol easily dissolved thru longed dried on adhesive. In fact it was WAY more effective than my usual go to cleaner for jobs like this, Methylated Spirit.

Anytime you need to clean the surface of metal contact areas or glass, providing you can protect the surrounding area from spillage, Isopropyl Alcohol is a good cleaner, BUT it is probably unsuited to cleaning a modern smart phone.

A few caveats: we used four different phones, one for each drying environment we tested. Obviously, different body designs will take on water differently, but we submerged each one until all the air had appeared to escape from the interior. Likewise, different designs may dry out differently, and water may have an easier time clinging to some nooks and crannies.

Why? This makes your entire experiment useless, since we can't actually draw any conclusions from it..

Dropped my 4S in hot, freshly-made chicken stock once. Greasy, hot liquid full of bones and silt. Pulled it out (It was still on, and didn't seem to mind), powered down and stuck it in rice. Powered up just fine the next morning. I think iPhones are sealed real, real tight.

A few caveats: we used four different phones, one for each drying environment we tested. Obviously, different body designs will take on water differently, but we submerged each one until all the air had appeared to escape from the interior. Likewise, different designs may dry out differently, and water may have an easier time clinging to some nooks and crannies.

Why? This makes your entire experiment useless, since we can't actually draw any conclusions from it..

Yeah, any actual scientist wouldn't vary two variables at the same time like this. The same phone should have been used for each drying method. As a result this experiment learned just about nothing. We have no way of knowing for each case whether it was the phone or the drying method that determined what worked or didn't.

As for vacuum, I'm not sure that would be so good for any capacitors in there, which could rupture under the low pressure. Alcohols and other solvents as others have pointed out may dry it, but there are plenty of materials in there that could be damaged by solvents.

I'd stick with rinsing in distilled water and then using the silica gel packets while warming to max operating temperature.

I'm a little surprised that no one has tried (or at least suggested) a blow dryer. After I dropped my phone into a swimming pool it took all of a few hours of gentle drying from 12" away for the phone to completely dry out. The warm breeze did a great job penetrating into the nooks and crannies.

I would think that using a blow drier would be counter productive. Not the heat, but you want to get the water out not blow it further in. I would think it would blow the water much further in before the heat ever evaporated it.